Y&R: Should LML Stay Or Go?

[Sylph]

Yes, I want Labine!!!! Where is that woman?

[DeeeDee]

CBS needs Claire if the show has any hope of survivin.

[PJA]

Go back and look at the ratings. Before LML took over when Alden and Smith were still headwriters the ratings dipped 3.9 and below several times....a lot more than it has happened since LML took over. CBS would be crazy to get rid of her when the ratings for the most part are better than when she took over...especially since all of the other soaps even B&B are all down. They are not going to get rid of her just because some people on this message board are unhappy...once it starts to reflect in the ratings then you will have a case but you don't.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

Well, they snagged Labine for GL in 2000 and that was a MAJOR BUST. Judging by her last two head-writing stings (on GL and OLTL), Labine has clearly lost a lot of her golden touch. Then again, isn't she in or close to her 70's? I really don't see her returning anytime soon.

Y&R's best bet is if they manage to sway someone like Trent Jones (who got his start on Ryan's Hope btw) back and pair him with a fabulous co-head-writer. What's Lorraine Broderick doing these days? She's a fantastic head-writer who always manages to learn the history of her characters and her storylines are always character-driven, she's a great match for Y&R.

[PJA]

Claire Labine ruined GL which was once my favorite soap. For the most part lately i have been enjoying the show...but LML doesn't need total control. Ashley was my favorite character and she fired Eileen (I tried watch B&B when she joined but it's worse than when I stopped watching it before) and then she brought back old Lily when nuLily was better, she had the reliquery mess, the Phelia mess...as a matter of fact that whole 4 month period was mess but the show has turned around fast for me.

[PJA]

Claire Labine ruined GL which was once my favorite soap. For the most part lately i have been enjoying the show...but LML doesn't need total control. Ashley was my favorite character and she fired Eileen (I tried watch B&B when she joined but it's worse than when I stopped watching it before) and then she brought back old Lily when nuLily was better, she had the reliquery mess, the Phelia mess...as a matter of fact that whole 4 month period was mess but the show has turned around fast for me.

[DeeeDee]

GL & OLTL are both different animals than Y&R. And a Labine-Mulcahey team would allow Labine to helm the show as a whole & Mulchaey to do the majority of the writin.

Jones is ok (though he tends to overdose on meandering dialogue).

Broderick or Labine would both be good choices as Y&R's HW. *sigh*

[DeeeDee]

Eh, no.

Alden was essentially long gone by the time Latham took over.

And Alden's ratings were consistent even with continued audience erosion.

No they wouldn't.

The main reasons why Y&R is currently doin well is because the soap industry as a whole is in its worst phase ever & cause it has TPIR as a lead in.

And had JERk not done such a hack job durin his last stint at DOOL (which is beginnin to heavily echo LML's current Y&R stint), it would be kickin Y&R's azz currently.

That's the thing.

It's not just this messageboard nor is it just a few longterm viewers.

Audience erosion is to be expected, swallowin crap for crap's sake isn't.

Eh. Wrong.

The 'case' is clear as day & quite valid.

You're just attemptin to spin schlock.

[Chris B]

Could someone explain to me why Claire Labine was bad at OLTL and GL? I love the woman! And lets not forget that she did a brilliant job of bringing GH into the 90s. It's possible that GL/OLTL weren't her soaps or maybe the people she was working with didn't click.

As someone who closely follows the ratings and gave Latham her props last year, I can assure you what you're saying is false. 3.9 is Y&R's record low, but Alden/Smith were much higher than the for the majority of the time and their ratings were consistant. Since February sweeps the ratings have been on a freefall for the most part, down even from Latham's start last year. The average for this year is 4.3 which is lower than the past few years. Also, I believe she hit a 3.7 for one week which would make it the new record low.

She has shown that she can only see rises in the ratings when she does a stunt like Dru or Nick's death, but on a day-to-day basis, no way. This can't be debated, ratings are ratings.

The thing that annoys me is that even her stunts aren't worth watching. She has some of the weakest confrontations I've ever seen on a soap and she avoids soapy moments all the time. Mac and Victoria had their miscarriages on screen. These are major events which could give those characters MONTHS of story. William/Jill and JillMin both had sex for the first time off screen. WTF?!

She wrangles things to fit her plots, she doesn't believe in character development and their motivations change with each storyline.

Last year the show was okay with Latham/Alden/Smith, but when she dumped them last November the show has been in a freefall.

[a2sassy]

Under LML, Y&R has lost it's identity. There's no more character driven storylines. It's plot point after plot point. But I can't put all the blame on LML. I blame TPTB more than anything for giving her all this power and then do nothing to reign her in. They should have learned from their mistake by giving Jack Smith the Ep title and NOT given it to LML. A writer should focus on the writing ONLY. They don't need to be running the show too. And Kay Alden should have been kept on as co-HW. She knows the history of the show.

I still shake my head at some of the things LML writes though. She starts off with good ideas but once you see them, they all become WTF moments. Her biggerst mistake was making Phillip III not Jill's son. And then she went and deSORASed him so now Nina and Phillip IV can NEVER come back. That's so much history gone because she wanted to start up the Kay/Jill feud again. And LML gets tunnel vision with certain characters. She locks on to one character and won't let them go. Brad is not and has NEVER been a lead character. He didn't deserve is own s/l and if she was gonna give him one, it should have been better that the reliquary crap. I wish Jack Smith would have made Brad Joshua (Bobby's brother) and this whole craptastic s/l could have been avoided.

LML also has it bad by turning the women into shells of their former selves. She doesn't even know how to write her favorite character Phyllis. I mean Nikki has always been a snob, but she would have NEVER threw her family under the bus like she did recently especially after the years of preaching family to Victor. Victoria is now no longer the strong woman she once was. Never in a million years would the real Victoria have gotten involved with Brad. He's so not her type.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

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Could someone explain to me why Claire Labine was bad at OLTL and GL? I love the woman! And lets not forget that she did a brilliant job of bringing GH into the 90s. It's possible that GL/OLTL weren't her soaps or maybe the people she was working with didn't click.

Lots of bizarre crap happened during her short and horrible stints on both shows.

OLTL had: Todd getting a parrot, and spending a number of scenes talking to the parrot about his life. Other stories at the time involved Marty and Patrick's wedding ending in a hail of gunfire and blood, Dorian's struggles to hide her dark family past, Nora struggling with peri-menopause, RJ opening a new bar with a transvestite mixologist, and most bizarre of all, Maggie Carpenter (Crystal Chappell) leaving Llanview to open a clown school in Paris, France.

Of course her replacements at OLTL, Jill Satan Phelps and Pam Long weren't any better.

GL was just un-watchable under Labine. Her storylines were perhaps the most boring the show had probably had up to that time. Also, GL's history wasn't utilized at all and characters were beyond out of character. Labine later admitted that she didn't know much about GL or its characters. Many scenes seemed long and pointless as well.

Claire Labine later admitted that her stints on both shows were bad and she takes full responsibility for that.

[DeeeDee]

THANK YOU.

I don't hate Phyllis.

I hate the way Phyllis is WRITTEN.

Phyllis has ALWAYS been a hypocrite.

An enjoyable hypocrite (more often than not) but still relatively rootable.

But ever since JS & especially LML took over she's gone from enjoyably feisty individual to an obnoxiously smug, needlessly histronic sociopath.

And she definitely aint the only one.

-Nikki's come to embody all the aspects of personality that she used to constantly deride in her husband as well as become a parody of herself.

-Lauren's a simpering coward who's lost her relatively strong moral compass & all of the unique sense of style she once possessed.

-Victoria's lost every bit of backbone & fire she once had only to become a tea servin, hand wringin emotionally masochistic doormat.

-Drucilla became a screeching banshee more concerned with snatchin skanky hoz up at work then bein with her family who were in dire need of her love & attention.

-Mackenzie became a perky, shallow, hypocritical, bubblehead with nothin better to do between stints of slingin coffee & doin her impression of bein the most boringly drab wallpaper EVER.

-Lily's a whiny, flaky little moron who's too absorbed with everyone else's problems to see and/or deal with the problems that have been inherent within her marriage from jump.

-Colleen's become a smirky, self absorbed, twit who refuses to accept any responsibility for her actions & blames everyone else for her problems.

-Katherine's an unapologetic shrew & retired baby theif who doesn't have anything better to do then interfere in her menopause aged daughter's life & give self righteous speeches about incompetency.

-Jill's a desperately pathetic middle aged woman actin like a panting teenager that's more worried about keepin the attention of a man than she is runnin a successful business.

-Amber. Well..she's Amber.

-Gloria. See Amber...except Gloria.

The only one that exhibited any POSITIVE growth was Sharon who went from dingbat with a heart to semi-dingbat with a heart.

And even she's backslidin now that Drucilla's MIA.

[Sylph]

It wasn't Claire's fault it was unwatchable:look here

[Y&RWorldTurner]

I know Rauch/P&G tampered a with a lot of her stuff on GL and Clarie was reportedly never happy there, but her failure on OLTL is squarely on her imo. As head-writer she should've known to handle the plotting and characterization better on both serials, yet she couldn't. Maybe it was the personal problems in her life that prevented her from focusing clearly on her last two headwriting stints, who really knows?

Her bizarre storyline ideas always struck me as strange on OLTL and GL though, knowing she was capable of much better quality as evident by RH and her GH stint.

I do know she later told SOW that the biggest failure in her career was her OLTL stint, which she claims to take full responsibility for.

here is the actual excerpt: What do you consider your biggest career failure?

The mishandling of the One Life to Live situation. I don't want to say more than that. I take full responsibility for mishandling it. (Claire and her son, Matt, wrote OLTL from December 1996 to February 1998.)

Here's the link to the actual article: http://ryansbaronline.tripod.com/labine6.html

[Sylph]

OK, maybe that is true, but what about her writing for Ryan's Hope?