Great commentary Darn.

Sadly just about everything you said is true. But even sadder is that every bit of it applies to every new writer that has taken over a show in the last 2 years to 3 years.

Let's see:

Passanante (ATWT) - yes broke them all

McTavish (AMC) - yes broke them all

Higley (OLTL) - broke them all and then some more

Sheffer (Days) - some will say no but yes he has - he has broken every one of them at times - some might not necessarily be his fault but they fall under his tenure and his decisions have been made more glaring because of some of them

Kriezman (GL) - yes broke them all

Technically Latham is no worse than any of the others. Sadly that is not saying much.

This is absolutely my problem with her regime, it's turned Y&R into Just Another Soap. I don't mean to say Y&R was Shakespeare before or Arthur Miller or Citizen Kane, it was just head and shoulders above the rest, now it's fairly middle of the pact. Maybe a little bit better but not by much. The mediocrity of the other soaps (even though they can have flashes of brilliance, such as GL this past week and a half) is what drove me to Y&R in the first place.

Soaps seem to be run differently behind the scenes nowadays in comparison to the days of soap production when this list of rules was written. Of course, headwriters do deserve alot of the blame, but I also think that alot of things are out of their control in today's world where everything is run by committee.

Soaps used to have a singular vision and voice and creators who knew their characters intimately. That's not the case anymore.

Soaps used to have a singular vision and voice and creators who knew their characters intimately. That's not the case anymore.

Yup. It's sad. And that's part of the reason for these rules being broken so often. Decisions are made by fifty people now, rather than one. A headwriter might have great story intentions, but for one ridiculous executive decision or another, the idea is nixed. Either that, or their original story vision is modified until it looks nothing like the original idea. Only a select few in daytime are really given free reign, and unfortunately for us, those few aren't worth a pile of sh!t.

When headwriters are given the chance to plow full steam ahead with their sole vision, greatness can occur. That rarely happens in today's world. Because of that, we can't really blame only the headwriters. There's a whole group of people who deserve to have eggs thrown at their heads.

Edited February 4, 200718 yr by Kenny

This is absolutely my problem with her regime, it's turned Y&R into Just Another Soap. I don't mean to say Y&R was Shakespeare before or Arthur Miller or Citizen Kane, it was just head and shoulders above the rest, now it's fairly middle of the pact. Maybe a little bit better but not by much. The mediocrity of the other soaps (even though they can have flashes of brilliance, such as GL this past week and a half) is what drove me to Y&R in the first place.

Soaps used to have a singular vision and voice and creators who knew their characters intimately. That's not the case anymore.

Oh I agree, but the show has been changing ever since Bell stepped down and then passed away. I for one quit watching under Alden & Smith. I couldn't stand what they did to the show. At least under Latham I do find the show watchable. She pulled me back in when John was found guilty of murder and then I stayed. I couldn't stand to watch much under Alden and under Smith I couldn't watch at all.

No one will ever be as good as Bell. Those days are over - unfortunately. And who knows even if Bell was still around - who knows that some of the things wouldn't have changed.

As others have pointed out it was a committee that didn't even include Latham that made a lot of the obvious choices like the shots of flowers and all. And one of those was Bell's own son. I mean that was published that he and his committee were the ones that made those changes, and they had nothing to do with Latham. Alot of those changes made by Bell and Bloom are the main things that don't make Y&R seem set apart anymore. It makes it appear just like the other soaps, but Latham had nothing to do with those.

I don't agree with everything Latham has done. But one thing that I have learned in the last year with all my shows - and believe me it was a hard lesson to learn. You can't compare your show to the way it used to be. If you do you will not be able to enjoy it anymore. That happened to me last year with so many of my shows.

You critique them and decide from that if you like what is happening and either move on or don't, but there are so many factors that influence what the shows are able to do today. As Kenny pointed out there is more things controlled by committee. Today the heads of daytime seem more involved than I ever remember them being. And of course budgets are not what they were.

Y&R fans are just now facing what many of us have had to face for a long time.

With that you may still find you don't like Y&R. I realized that and there are still things I don't like about my 2 absolute favorite shows Days and AMC, but I am able to watch them some now and enjoy them. Neither are going to be as good as they once were. I know many say Hogan has brought back the old Days but IMO he hasn't. His Days is still a pale version of the Days I have loved in the past - some of that has to do with him but others I am sure is Corday and Wyman. But it is better than it was. And to me Y&R is world's better than it was under Smith, and still heads above the rest of daytime in quality.