Khan

I'm not saying Bill Bell wouldn't have had someone poison all the Newmans simultaneously...but I am saying he would've taken more time to build up to it. A LOT more time.

I'd say the transition was seamless for the most part. After all, Kay Alden had been with Y&R since 1974, so she knew the show. Furthermore, even when Bill Bell was still head-writing, she had played such a part in the conception and development of so many storylines that it'd be nearly impossible to tell the difference between her work and his. (Same goes for Agnes Nixon and her protégé at AMC, Wisner Washam. Washam officially became HW in 1981, but reports suggest that Washam probably was head-writing with Nixon sooner). Unless you paid attention to the credits, you wouldn't have known when Bill Bell's work officially ended and when hers began. At least, not until the sperm switch. (I won't go into THAT storyline, lol). Personally, I think it was a mistake to bring in John F. Smith when they did. I think Alden was HW'ing the show just fine (again, sperm switch notwithstanding, lol), but I think TPTB panicked when the ratings dropped - never mind that ratings were dropping for all soaps and that Y&R was still number-one - and decided she needed a Co-HW. And I think it was an even bigger mistake when then-CBSD president (or vice-president) Barbara Bloom had Lynn Marie Latham to join them. At least Smith (and Bern/Jones) had had a long history with Y&R, so they knew the show like Alden did. But LML had no prior relationship with Y&R, nor was Y&R ever her kind of show. Anyone who'd seen her work on other shows - BERRENGER'S, KNOTS LANDING, HOMEFRONT, PC, etc - could've told the network as much. Her hiring was truly the moment when Y&R fell from grace.

Never say never!

Maybe next year, Lifetime could do a "Ladies of the '70's" movie with women like Lynda Carter, Cheryl Ladd and Jaclyn Smith.

I've always believed that the best way to know how to write/produce/direct a show like Y&R was to go back and watch the kind of glossy melodramas that the studios made in the '50's: not just the films that Douglas Sirk made for Universal - "All That Heaven Allows," "Magnificent Obsession," "Written on the Wind" - but also films like "Peyton Place," "Love is a Many Splendored Thing," "Cash McCall," "Executive Suite," "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit," "A Summer Place," etc.

Wow, @Franko, thank you for gathering all that information! Looking at those stats, it seems Gloria Monty's second EP'ing stint at GH was an even bigger disaster than I remembered. For example, just 3-4 months after the Eckerts were introduced, Fred and Angela, the patriarch and matriarch of the family, were written out; and less than five months after Nancy was introduced, SHE was killed off! Unless those quick exits had been the plan all along, I'd say either Monty or the network recognized right away that her new vision for the show was all wrong.

I agree. Even Mondays wouldn't have worked, because of "Monday Night Football." ABC would have needed to push back DYNASTY to January; and in 1989, that kind of programming was unheard of on American TV. I have a feeling that if ABC had renewed DYNASTY for another season, the budget would have been slashed to ribbons. Even fewer exterior scenes than there had been in S9, and probably more off-the-rack wardrobe, too. (Bye-bye, Nolan Miller originals!) Moreover, Linda Evans was already gone and Joan Collins had made it clear she would not be back. John Forsythe probably would have returned, if only to maintain some continuity. But the main cast would have been down to him, John James, Emma Samms, Gordon Thomson, Heather Locklear (because, after all, you need some "eye candy" for the men to look at, lol), Stephanie Beacham and Tracy Scoggins. If the rumors about Diahann Carroll returning for S10 had been true, that would have made eight regular cast members. Unless the plan was to lean heavily on recurring/supporting players who could be paid less, it would have been a very, very thin cast.

I'm happy for CZ, who obviously relishes being back on daytime. I just wish she had a character with staying power, not a psycho who's already been written into a corner.

ICAM, @kalbir. For awhile, however, he succeeded. Even DALLAS flirted with becoming more like DYNASTY during the "dream season."

ABC would have needed to think outside the proverbial box and hire a HW with little-to-no previous experience in soaps. Or, if we were talking about post-Pat Falken Smith, maybe someone like Susan Bedsow Horgan, since she loves everything related to Gaelic culture.

The most important thing to remember about Bill Bell and his work is how much emphasis he placed on letting his stories unfold slowly and carefully so that we understood exactly what his characters were always thinking. He was never afraid to take his time with stories, and he was never afraid to allow even his "good" characters be seen in less than flattering ways either.

For sure, I think Douglas Marland would have respected Labine & Mayer's vision enough to keep the Ryans and Ryan's Pub front-and-center. He might have been okay with writing for the Coleridges, too. The only question mark in this situation is Delia. In Marland's hands, Delia either would have become boring or overly kooky.

Better yet, name her "Margo," like I said upthread, and bring on Hillary B. Smith or Ellen Dolan as her and Eve's OTHER sister, "Barbara."

I'll just pretend her real name is "Judith."

Josh Morrow acts as if he ate some bad sushi. At the rate Jordan's going, she'll be plunging all of Genoa City into terminal darkness by next week.

"Sisters" fit well with the NBC brand, but I think it would've fit on ABC, too.

I agree. Watching it again on Pluto TV, I think there is much about the final season that I like. The storytelling is more focused, with everything built toward one main goal. Characters have real, understandable motivations. The dialogue isn't as cringey and actors are being directed to ACT rather than just pose and make OTT pronouncements. And while it's obvious that the budget has been reduced - as one poster said in the Primetime Soaps thread, Joan Collins seems to be wearing a lot of Chanel (or Chanel-like) outfits this season - there's still enough glamour there, I think, in the wardrobe and sets to satisfy those who watched mostly for that stuff. I, myself, would have gone further with the revamp, making scenes shorter and switching out the old, orchestrations for synthesized music. Overall, though, I would agree that David Paulsen did a decent job. However, at the same time, you're right, @Chris 2, in that it was a tired show, and not just because Linda Evans was gone and Joan Collins was reduced to nominal special guest star. (Frankly, as iconic as JC and Alexis were, both on the show and in the '80's, I think Alexis wore out her welcome long before the last season). IMO, DYNASTY was tired, because its' excessiveness had taken so much out of the show and its' characters. For all the things that David Paulsen did right with the last season, it still felt like coming down after snorting a yacht full of cocaine. Paulsen probably needed to take a page from Bill Bell's Y&R playbook, phase out the Carringtons and Colbys and rebuild the show around a new family or two, but obviously, that wasn't feasible.

Conversely, Bill Bell and Agnes Nixon hated the hour format, because they felt it required too much padding. I agree. Clearly, Douglas Marland loved to tell big stories with a lot of characters. (He would have killed on a streaming series, by the way). A half-hour soap doesn't lend itself to big "umbrella stories," because the amount of time per episode is so limited.

I agree. Even a brand-new, thirty-minute soap can be a crap shoot. I'd argue, however, that many of the later ones failed for very specific reasons. LOVING failed, for instance, because it never had a strong enough identity or theme. TC failed, because, even though it had MORE of an identity than LOVING, it still was a spin-off of a failed soap opera, and it didn't have a strong story to help launch it either. (Morgan Fairchild and her boots arriving by helicopter is a great scene, but it's not a story.) Both CAPITOL and GENERATIONS were well-structured, but their executions were all wrong. Neither had good writing when they started. (CAPITOL, however, did get better as time went on. GENERATIONS, on the other hand, never got the chance.) And PC, IMO, never got out from under GH's shadow, which is ironic, because it probably was more hospital-centric than GH had been in years. Even when it became DARK SHADOWS: THE NEW BREED, it still felt to me like GH2. B&B, on the other hand, survived, not just because of Bill Bell's skills as a storyteller, but also because it had a real, discernible theme: a family drama set against the backdrop of the fashion industry in L.A.* B&B experienced some growing pains, of course, but I think you could see the potential from the start. (Potential that, I'm sad to say, Bradley has squandered.) You can blame NBC Daytime for TEXAS being an inferior version of DALLAS. The Corringtons and Paul Rauch's original concept was for a soap set in the antebellum South, but NBCD wanted something that was more in line with DALLAS, which had become a massive hit. Personally, I think the Corrington's original idea sounds intriguing, but I don't know how sustainable it'd have been as an ongoing, daily serial. (*I think it would've made more sense to set it in NYC, the home of "Fashion Week," but whatever.)

I know the Christmas episode from that year credits her and JER as HW's.

By the 1988-89 season, ABC had begun to carve out a new reputation for itself as a serious challenger to NBC and its' upscale, quality programming. The network wanted to be known as something other than "Aaron's Broadcasting Company." DYNASTY was seen as a tired, useless relic of that period. Unless the show had miraculously clawed its way back into the Top 10, it was a goner. I agree. Like you said, @soapfan770, DYNASTY was flailing in the ratings. "Cheers" was their main competitor, and it was handing them their ass every week. No way was ABC going to renew DYNASTY for another season. David Paulsen's efforts to turn DYNASTY around and bring it into the post-Reagan era were commendable, but he and the rest of the team should have crafted a series finale that would have tied up all loose ends.

So would Michael.

They say one should never speak ill of the drag, but, dear God, that look is hideous.

I would have named her "Margo."

I agree.