Broderick

Maria Arena was utterly wretched. In her defense though (lol), I honestly doubt she wrote a single word that aired on the show. She probably absent-mindedly tossed some (terrible) ideas to her underlings and barked at them to elaborate on her lousy ideas and type them up, and perhaps she actually scanned a few scripts during her trans-Atlantic flights. But she seemed far too flighty and socialite-minded to ever sit down at a computer and work her way through a problem, or even to read & contemplate what someone else had written. I've never been able to accept that she actually wrote anything herself. But she was more than happy to take credit for the garbage that was churned out during her tenure as "head writer".

I expect so. I believe Brock Broughton was working on those (pretty) sets from Day One. If not, he was there from Day Two, lol.

I expect Bill either flew out to Los Angeles (or they sent the tapes to Lake Shore Drive) when they were auditioning a character who was slated to last for years (such as Jaime Lyn Bauer, who was cast after 9 months or so as Lorie Brooks). But Victor Newman and Kay Chancellor were initially slated for pretty short-term roles, and I doubt Bell was jumping up & down wanting to see all the applicants. (Ditto for the boy who played Scott Adams.) Just my guess. Some of those early names from the production crew are forever stuck in my head (such as John Conboy, of course), the main director (Bill Dunlap), the set decorator (Brock Broughton), that weird trio of writers ("Eric L. Roberts", lol), the hair stylist (India Sparhawk), but when it comes to Patricia Wenig -- I never get that one right.

Yes, thank you!! It hit me after I posted. Jeanne Cooper described her as "the girl who looked as though she worked in a pastry shop in Carmel, California."

In her verbal interview with Archive of American Television, Jeanne Cooper indicates that Bill Bell was nowhere in sight when she auditioned for the role of Kay Chancellor. She said John Conboy called her, she eventually came in, and she read for John Conboy and that female producer whose name I can't ever remember. Possibly, John Conboy overnighted Bill Bell a tape of the audition to his apartment in Chicago, but it wasn't mentioned if he did. My feeling is Bill Bell was involved (heavily) in the initial casting of the Brooks and Foster families, but after that, casting was handled by John Conboy and that girl. I believe John Conboy, as the executive producer, had the ultimate authority to hire & fire people. Ditto for Wes Kenney. Once those two executive producers were gone, Bill Bell made sure he ALWAYS had an executive producer credit, making him the ultimate decision-maker on matters like that. [Edit --- Patricia Wenig was the female producer's name.]

In my opinion, Kay Alden held her own once she was in charge, even breathed some fresh life into the show. This would've been 1998-2000 (approximately). But then she stalled completely; she hit a series of storyline duds. She introduced a character named "Sean Bridges" into Jill Foster's orbit, cloaked him in mystery, recast him spontaneously, had him spout out a bunch of mumbo-jumbo about sleeping on futons, and then dropped him without exploring any of it fully. She squandered the final months of Shemar Moore's contract with a ridiculous story involving a "retro prom" for an unlikable character named Alex Perez. She wasted months spinning her wheels on Mackenzie Browning's dull mother, Amanda Browning. And then there was her downright bizarre obsession with sperm and sputum (Victor's sperm, Cassie's sputum). I kept waiting for her to introduce smegma into the mix. Just what we all we wanted to hear about during lunch! The ratings dropped substantially -- from the high 7's to the low 5's. Jack Smith was brought in to "help" her. Whether he'd simply lost his mind (or whether he was acting under a mandate from SONY), he introduced the most childlike, juvenile stories in Y&R's history: Look! -- upper-middle class Brittany is suddenly a STRIPPER!!! Bad Boy JT is crooning syrupy love ballads to Colleen and porking Mrs. Hodges!!! Kay Chancellor forgot she had another child and -- surprise!! -- it's JILL!! It was just one disaster after another. And the ratings reflected it. It was as though a twelve-year-old boy was the head writer. By the time Lyn Marie Latham pranced onto the scene with her reliquaries, there was nowhere to go but up! Miss Latham, however, figured out a way to go down even farther. And so have all her successors.

His stories were long & involved and generally moved toward a powerful, emotional climax. As titan1978 alludes to above, the day-to-day writing (for Y&R) was stylized and detached. If you watch Douglas Marland's (best) material or Anges Nixon's (best) material, it's what I would call "kitchen sink" stuff, where everything looks completely "normal" and people talk in a normal manner, with lots of interruptions and chit-chat. Bill Bell didn't bother with that much. He wrote in the manner in which we might "remember" events --- simply choosing what's vitally important and focusing on that. It's often "cerebral" or "chilly", but it got the job done without any excess.

The actor who played Nick Andropolous was born in 1929, and the actor who played his brother was born in 1953. So there was a 24-year age gap between them. I don't remember the characters mentioning their ages during any of the episodes I saw, but I got the impression Nick was supposed to be "about 45" and Steve was probably supposed to be "about 25".

I was far too young to understand MUCH of their "boomer angst", as well, but I usually made a point to watch it. What appealed to me about it was how non-homogenous they were. Ellyn was your basic yuppy in her career goals (and in her attire), but she was also strangely neurotic and eccentric, almost like a Tennessee Williams heroine. Gary and Melissa were orbiting around a "yuppy crowd" but were fundamentally bohemians who marched to the beat of a very non-yuppy drum. Michael LOOKED like your basic yuppy and had a yuppy job, but instead of living in a Center City high-rise and driving a Mercedes, he lived in an old house (where something was always broken), had that old car, and expressed self-doubt (where you would've expected extreme confidence, considering his good looks). Hope was a housewife and stay-at-home mom in a period of time where most women her age were actively rejecting that role. Nancy was a beaten-down artist who wanted to be creative, but felt saddled with two kids and a husband who was often a jerk. Elliot seemed content to follow Michael down the Yuppy Brick Road but you could tell he envied Gary's free spirit and flagrant lack of commitment. Even though they were doing absolutely nothing in most episodes (except whining & whining, lol), they were entertaining to watch, because each character was so unique and cleverly drawn. And the actors were GOOD, as evidenced by their zillion Emmy nominations. 🤣 🤣 🤣

I don't believe him either. When Knots Landing premiered, David Jacobs was insistent that the "pitch" he'd initially given to CBS was "an American version of Scenes From a Marriage, which obviously wouldn't have included a "JR character" or an "Abby character". CBS, of course, shot down his proposal as being too "dull" for their audience, and asked him instead to work-up something more EPIC, which inspired him to steal the characters from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and move them from the Mississippi Delta to the setting of Giant, which he erroneously believed at the time was Dallas/Fort Worth. The only way he ultimately convinced the network to greenlight Knots Landing was to purge one of the couples from his cul-de-sac and replace that couple with Gary & Valene, which he then complained about, because the "entire dynamic" of what he'd originally pitched was "compromised" by the addition of the Gary and Val and the deletion of Blank & Blank, whom he'd intended to place in that particular house. (I've often wondered who 'Blank & Blank' were that got the axe.) 😂 Apparently so! If you've studied Scenes From a Marriage, it's a story of whiners. Their "problems" are things along the lines of "does my husband truly appreciate me for who I am and what I bring to his life?", or "does he just want a wife?". "Does my wife really love me? Has ANYONE ever loved me?" It's all sheer angst. That's what David Jacobs claims he pitched to CBS for Knots Landing. I believe the more "mundane" a conflict is, and the more it's discussed, it leads to the WHINING accusation. If you look at the first season of thirtysomething, the episodes were built around the most mundane things imaginable. In one episode, Ellyn discovered the apartment she was renting was converting to a co-operative. If she wanted to stay in the building, she'd be expected to purchase the unit. She whined about it for a solid hour. She loved the building and didn't want to move. But could she afford the down payment on the co-op? What if Mr. Right came along suddenly and she had to dispose of a co-op in a "down market" instead of merely breaking a lease on an apartment? Horrors!! Her whole life was turned upside down over the co-op conversion! As viewers, most of us will never run Colby Co or will never testify in a dramatic murder trial. But at some point in our lives we will agonize over the purchase of real estate. Yet I'd never seen this "issue" dramatized on TV before. thirtysomething delved into it DEEPLY (along with many other things just as mundane), and that's what led to the "whining" accusation from your parents (and from me). We're accustomed to shows where people just "buy a ranch" or "buy a penthouse" or "buy a multi-national conglomerate" and don't give it a second thought. We're not accustomed to watching someone weigh the pros & cons of a major purchase. Everyone I knew called them "the whining yuppies" or "the whining baby boomers", but in hindsight, they introduced some topics that resonated with a really big audience, and they dealt with those topics in a clever way. Although at the time it seemed like mere whining. Gary was offered tenure at the University! Would he need to cut his hair and shave? Would he be expected to buy a car instead of riding his bicycle to class?! Would he have to purchase a sportscoat and stop wearing his high school athletic jacket?? Was he trading his "bohemian independence" for the "bourgeois pompous lifestyle" he'd always railed against?! Horrors!! Hope wanted Baby Janey to have a Christmas tree for her first holiday season, because all of Hope's happy holiday memories were built around Christmas trees. Michael expected to have eight nights of the menorah (in the window! on newly-fallen snow!) and NO Christmas tree! Horrors!! "Maybe my parents were right," Michael whined to Elliot. "Maybe I should've married a Jewish girl instead of a Christian." Elliot, who was considering divorcing Nancy because of their insurmountable angst, rolled his eyes and said, "Why yes, Michael, our shared faith has certainly been a beacon in my wonderful marriage with Nancy!" lol. It was NOTHING but whining, but it was whining about things most of us, at some point, do encounter. I think you're right. Abby showed an audience -- even in a somewhat negative way -- that a single person can indeed contribute to "family conflict", and probably paved the way for Gary, Ellyn, and Melissa to be an integral part of thirtysomething. Had the show premiered in 1979, when Knots Landing did, it would've possibly been deemed necessary for Gary & Melissa to be married to each other and Ellyn wouldn't have been included at all.

I would say thirtysomething WAS a soap, much like The Paper Chase (arguably) was. Those two shows featured self-contained episodes, of course, and they had perhaps a higher literary/symbolic quality than we normally associate with a soap opera, but obviously the fundamental storyline threads were never solved in a single episode. If you got cancer, you didn't cured in a week. If you weren't completely satisfied being a housewife, you still weren't completely satisfied with the situation at the end of the hour. If you went out on your own and started a business, you struggled with it from then on.

Another issue David Jacobs had (in my opinion) was his preconceived notion that everyone needed a spouse, due to his fascination with Scenes From a Marriage. He initially populated his cul-de-sac with four married couples, and I don't believe he realized he was limiting his storyline possibilities at the starting gate. thirtysomething had a cast of 7 -- two married couples and three single individuals. This enabled the show to contrast various everyday situations among marrieds and singles in a way Knots Landing couldn't. thirtysomething might do an entire episode about Elliot and Nancy looking for a babysitter, while Gary has a one-night stand. Or Hope might want Michael to pull-out prior to ejaculation, while Ellyn is trying to get a promotion at work. (And the writers were clever enough to tie the various story threads together so that the entire cast was utilized in an ensemble manner, although the episode was focused primarily on one married couple or one single person.) Obviously Knots Landing was the more successful show, running for 14 (?) seasons, while thirtysomething ran for only about 4 seasons, but 30-something showed that single people (and their angst) could be dealt with as effectively as married couples and THEIR angst, a thought which hadn't occurred, evidently, to David Jacobs when he was planning Knots Landing.

And "thirtysomething", which started in 1987 (?) on ABC and was the antithesis of Dynasty -- a quiet story of middle-class (and sometimes bohemian) individuals dealing with everyday issues.

I found a very detailed review of Dynasty by Mark Muro, published in late 1982 for the Boston Globe. While the review itself might be interesting in the Dynasty thread, here are a few quotes that are applicable here: "For one thing, there are the characters. Stereotypes all, you snicker at the professional half-conviction with which they are played." "With her tart's sultriness and English accent (which sounds fake, even though she really is British), Alexis personifies all that is Dynasty. So no one's confused, good Krystle is a stereoscopic, white-gowned blonde in the Bo Derek Mode, while dark Alexis, who looks like a cut-rate Elizabeth Taylor, wears an astonishing wardrobe in, yup, black. Because, you know, she's evil." "America is a nation of overkill. We like things in extremes. When we want money or power or sex, we want a LOT of it!" "We want the gutter or the penthouse. Nothing in between. If we can get the gutter and the penthouse in the same place, all the better!" "What distinguishes Dynasty is the scale, the pure brazenness of it all. In keeping with the 'aesthetic of overkill', the plot is a perfectly realized hysteria of soap opera action." "Always anxious to cooperate with our lust for quick gratification, Dynasty goes all the way on every date." "It's as if they jammed five segments of any other soap opera into each hour. Bang, bang, bang: kidnapping, bigamy, rape, financial ruin, death-bed marriages, adultery, lost sons, babies falling from the roof ...Dynasty is both above, and below, criticism. It's that shameless." [I believe when you try to massively overdo a creative endeavor in order to achieve "instant gratification" -- such as packing 5 segments of melodramatic material into one hour of programming -- and when you try to slap the "gutter" AND the "penthouse" into the same storyline -- and when your British actress manages to sound like she's "faking" a British accent -- and when even the kindest critic describes your characters as "stereotypes all" -- it becomes very DIFFICULT to top the inherent comedy in such a bizarre mess of a show. And that's why a deliberate comedy such as "Fresno" couldn't compete with this beloved disaster of a show.]

That scene was definitely a memorable foray into absurdity! By about the third (?) season, the directors were even BLOCKING the scenes to maximize the humor. Two characters would toss out their predictably ridiculous lines -- "I will ruin you!" --- "I will see you in HELL first!!" -- "Is that a threat?!" -- "That's a PROMISE!!" -- and then the actor who was obviously about to be slapped would preen dastardly, with his/her cheek upturned for the impending blow, while the other character reeled back theatrically to sock him across the face.

It's also difficult to determine exactly when Dynasty veered into such camp. In the beginning, the show seemed fairly "normal" and "benign". But in one of the very first episodes -- I believe it was the pilot! -- we saw Blake, Fallon, and Steven having a gloomy family dinner at this 40-foot-long dining hall table that looked like something from King Arthur's court. The writers appeared to believe that small, wealthy families eat their weeknight dinners in a Mead Hall. None of the principals made any comment about why they were eating at such an ELONGATED table when there were only three of them. It was a weirdly campy scene in an otherwise down-to-earth episode. Alexis, of course, entered as a somewhat outrageous character who brought an undeniable element of camp into the proceedings, but it seemed a deliberate choice to place a high-camp villainess among the more "grounded" characters. As the years went by, though, everyone in the cast seemed to strive to attain Alexis's level of "dramatic outrageousness", and the whole thing became an often hilarious spoof of 1980s Americana excess. It almost seemed to happen by accident, with the writers, producers, directors, and actors blissfully unaware of the absurdity of the overly-dramatic and cliché-riddled scenes.

I believe it was more along the lines of, "Looks like you're a lady with something pretty heavy going on. Pass me some more of that stuff, Tim." lol [I don't recall it being a remote sequence.]

I'd say that's exactly right. Carol Burnett & Company played their campy material as "boulevard comedy" in Fresno, which effectively butchered the camp component. The cast of Dynasty played their campy material as "straight drama", with hilarious results.

I would imagine so. I suffered through the first episode of "Fresno" when it premiered, and I found it awfully tiresome. If we wanted to see "situational humor" in a primetime soap format, JR Ewing, Angela Channing, and Abby were offering that weekly in a more consistent manner. If we wanted to see dependable "high camp humor", the entire cast of Dynasty appeared to be (unintentionally) providing that. "Fresno", as it was presented, truly didn't have anything to offer that hadn't already been around since 1980.

I'm not sure how long it takes to go from conceptualization to script to casting to filming to airing, but Fresno's initial airing in the fall of 1986 was about 5 years past its expiration date. Those of us interested in watching a nighttime soap parody had been "treated" to Dynasty for SEVERAL seasons by the time "Fresno" came along. "Dynasty" seemed to offer a more "sophisticated" brand of humor than "Fresno", considering Dynasty's overblown caricatures of the rich, absurdly melodramatic dialogue penned in an earnest, childlike fashion, and delivered in a pseudo-serious manner by a cast dressed in ridiculous regalia, surrounded by every conceivable cliché. By Fresno's 1986 premier, it wasn't possible for a miniseries to successfully parody a weekly series that was a complete parody of an already tongue-in-cheek genre.

I was really fond of Brenda Epperson, too -- but I couldn't see much evidence of Ashley Abbott in the character she was playing.

I never thought going to the Virgin Islands or St. Croix was terribly effective, when their idea of a city park was a roll of Astroturf, a garbage can, and a fake tree, lol.

P&G had a real purge in the very early 1980s. "Edge" dumped longtime police chief Bill Marceau for Derek Mallory circa 1980. "World Turns" saw Nancy & Chris Hughes dumped to recurring about 1981. "Guiding Light" dumped Holly's mother, Roger's father, Steve Jackson, and Sara McIntyre about 1981. The soap press at the time said this was an effort to mimic Y&R, but ironically, at the same time, Y&R was writing very complex storylines for Jeanne Cooper, who was in her early 50s.

Good thing they didn't cast John James as Steven! Seriously, I believe those three roles (Steven, Fallon, and Jeff) were cast extremely well initially. Pamela Sue Martin made Fallon ballsy & aggressive, as well as likeable. No one could do moody & sensitive as well as Al Corley. And John James was great as the rather shallow, superficial all-American boy. Corley's Steven Carrington was such a complex character (to me) that his sexuality seemed almost "secondary" to the other traits that he brought to the role. He came across as well-educated, well-read, introspective, sensitive, kind-hearted, tortured, and confused. I found it believable that he could go from Ted Dinard to Sammy Jo to Claudia. He always struck me as a character who was searching for himself and trying to discover who he really was. I know Al Corley took a certain amount of pride in playing one of nighttime TV's first "gay characters" in a dramatic series, but I wish he'd opened himself more to the fluidity that his characterization was bringing to the role of Steven.

And that was a decision which made Cecil into an inept cartoon character. Supposedly, he was a longtime businessman and savvy about the world. Wouldn't Cecil have long ago drafted a will naming nephew Jeff as his heir & successor at ColbyCo? Sure, if some British lady came along, batted her eyes, and said, "Sessil, I'd love to be your wife for one episode!", Cecil would've probably set aside a marital trust of some type for the new wife. But he obviously wouldn't have made her CEO of his company. lol. In real-life, she wouldn't have even been a minority shareholder, other than through a marital trust that Jeff was trustee of. All of that just looked ridiculous.