2009: The Directors and Writers Thread

[Toups]

Firing Slater and Esser is not the solution - those two know the show inside-out. Look what happened when all the Y&R vets got fired under Latham, and now you want to fire the two longest Y&R vets? No way man. The most sensible solution, since MAB is not going any where, is to promote them to Co-HWs replacing Sheffer/Hamner. Put Slater in the Sheffer position (dealing with the BDWs) and JFE in the Hamner position (dealing with the SWs).

You can't expect to have good breakdowns/scripts when the pacing sucks, when beats are skipped and stories are crap.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

I'm starting to see why Sylph isn't impressed with Esser. Her dialogue is contrived, she tries to insert bits of history, but it doesn't add up, and in most cases it's not necessary.

But even a good scriptwriter can shine under bad stories, again,I cite the GH scriptwriting team. Guza's stories suck, but it doesn't stop the conversations on that show from sounding natural, organic, and having a clear point. And often, they aren't masked with history mentions to cover up just how hallow they are. Y&R's dialogue, even with Esser, is hallow, generic, and soul-less. The uniqueness of "voice" isn't there anymore. Everything has become robotic and inorganic.

I'm still not impressed with a 3 HW arrangement for this show, especially with someone in the lead like MAB. Why does a show need that many people plotting and coming up with story? As we've seen now, it makes everything look disjointed, choppy, and all over the place. I see too many cooks in Y&R's kitchen at the moment, and I don't know if a promotion for Slater or Esser will help that.

The Bell's need to come to their senses and get a real HW for this show..

You can however expect decent conversations between characters and nice, clear scenes that have a point. The conversations on Y&R don't feel real anymore and lack substance. The overall scenes are too short for me to ever be invested, and the interactions between characters feel contrived and lost.

ETA: Esser and Slater are far from the worst on the Y&R writing team, I just used them because I expect better out of them, given their long affiliation with Y&R.

My point with that initial post was firing the whole team and getting a real HW who knows his/her sub-writers (preferably a small writing team) and there's a cohesive vision amongst the HW, SW's and BW's, which I do not see on Y&R.

[Toups]

I don't see how inserting history devalues the conversations. I'm always for history mentions, the more the better.

I haven't been impressed with GH's scripts in a long time and I don't blame that on the SWs, because I hate the stories. Whenever I watched, I haven't said to myself, "Oh...that was so good, I want to type that up!" What was the last great GH script? I don't remember any scenes. There's nothing that stood out.

For me, it starts at the top and if the top sucks, the suckiness with trickle down to the breakdowns and then down the scripts...even with GH. GH's SWs can't save that show.

Well, when you have an inexperienced writer, you need Co-HWs. Of course the best thing would to have one HW but in this case, you need two better Co-HWs than Sheffer/Hamner. And if you're going to replace them, it's gotta be Slater/Esser, who lived and breathe the show for their entire career. You don't give it to two newbies who don't know the show like Sheffer and Hamner.

I will always stick up for staff writers when the stories suck because I know when they can get the material, they will knock it out of the park.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

I'm for them when they make sense in the context of the scenes. If there's a scene that doesn't allude to anything from the past, I don't care for them.

With Y&R, it feels like they hit you over the head with past history to try to make you get into what they're doing and it falls flat for me. Even when Bell, Alden, and Smith used history, it was never done like this by their team.

I don't mean the overall scenes. I meant the characters on GH more than often have a unique voice. For example, though Alexis and Diane are both lawyers, anal, and somewhat repressed characters, they don't sound the same.

On Y&R, Nikki, Jill, Sharon, or Phyllis could be given the same dialogue these days and I wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Hell, it some cases, it seems like they recycle dialogue from character to character. No one seems distinct to me anymore, and it's not all in the storytelling that trickles down to the writing staff, who all seem lost to me.

They can't, I'm not saying that, but good dialogue can go a long way in making scenes better. Particularly, I loved those scenes between Alexis and Molly on Monday's GH. The story sucks, but those scenes had a clear point and both characters had their point of view cleared. The SW also got the emotional context of those scenes, which I find to be rare on Y&R. The scenes that are supposed to be emotional on Y&R, like Zapato's funeral or whenever Nick and Phyllis talk about poor little Summer, feel botched and lack an emotional or sensible approach in the dialogue and in the scenes themselves, at least for me.

And that is a major problem. Why can't anyone see that? I agree it all starts at the top, and in this case, Y&R has a very inexperienced HW with very little connections in the business.

I'd be content with anyone from Y&R's past and even if she wanted to bring Jack Smith back as her Co-HW I could accept it.

Esser has always been a SW, who knows how that will translate in being a Co-HW.

Slater at least has plotting experience and has written both breakdowns and scripts. But even her is a big maybe with me. I guess you never know until they try it, which isn't even likely anyway.

And I not all with it has to be someone from Y&R's past or else it will be an automatic fail. Talented storytellers are talented storytellers, no matter how much experience they have with a particular show.

Some staff writers aren't good or are not a good match for a particular show, Jay Gibson and Lisa Connor have been horrendous additions to Y&R, IMO. I can't say I've enjoyed any episode with their names in the credits.

Again, my main point was I expected better out of Esser and Slater, given how long they've been there. For their years of experience with this show, none of that is shining through right now.

Wasn't it Slater who wrote Phillip III's first episode back, AKA one of the worst and most botched episodes in soap history?

Again, I don't feel there's any cohesion in Y&R's writing team. Too many writers whose styles are not in-sync. Hell, too many writers overall. No one can tell me Y&R functions best with a writing staff as big as this.

Bill Bell, Kay Alden, and Jack Smith all had small writing teams and the writers knew each other well and were often on the same page. That showed on their show, even when the stories were bad. Right now and from the beginning of this writing regime at Y&R, that has never been the case, also with the equally bad Latham era. But I guess it goes back to MAB's inexperience and Sheffer and Hamner not being the best matches for this show too.

[Toups]

I'd like to see some examples of how a scene can be botched by bringing up history. I just can't see how history ruins the scene. LOL

I see what you're saying here.

You see, I think if the Y&R team are given the chance to slow the fuck down, they too can write good conversation scenes. Amanda Beall's breakdown/script on April 7th (I even knew the date by heart! LOL) sticks out in my mind and I believe it was the last time Y&R had one of those type of episodes.

If not the team of Esser/Slater, then bring back Alden and Smith as Co-HWs under MAB.

No, I believe she's done some breakdowns (before Y&R started crediting episode BDWs) and she was a SE.

That's true, but we won't know if they're not given the chance.

Nothing sticks out in my mind either. LOL

I don't blame her for that because I bet she was told to get as much in as possible - plot, plot, plot. We know that Y&R is not slowing down for anything right now and I really feel bad for the staff writers because they know they're writing shit right now. Staff writers know when they're writing shit but they gotta do it because it's their job. And they can't veer off of what TPTB are asking, or else they're going to get "WTF are you doing?" in their notes. LOL

[Y&RWorldTurner]

Off the top of my head, I recall the scenes between Jack and Phyllis where Phyllis tells Jack that Mary Jane was really into him. By this point, we had already known Mary Jane was Patty or we at least had a strong indication of who she was and that she was a woman from Jack's past.

Anyway, throughout the course of that conversation, Jack suddenly remembers the time his ex-wife Patty shot him three times in the back because of how horrible he was to her.

We already knew there Mary Jane was probably Patty and that she was someone from Jack's past. The point of that conversation was about how Mary Jane really likes Jack and how into him she is, not that Jack was married to Patty and the fact she shot him three times in the back when they were married.

Stuff like that is happening all the time, it doesn't add anything to the general point of the conversations. It's like they just hit us over the head with it and insert it in there for history buffs. Esser wrote that particular script, I believe.

I think my main point was Y&R has too many writers on staff, and their styles are so different from one another. It doesn't appear to me they're all on the same page. Kinda of like how all the writers on the show pre-Latham knew each other and their was a cohesive vision that they all followed to make the show gel together, even when they stories were bad. I don't think that many of the staff writers get the show, and the ones with the longest history appear to be getting lost.

Even with ludicrous pacing, I do believe the conversations can be better written, which I don't find to be the case at all right now. Many of the conversations right now could have been more clear, and could have showcased the uniqueness of each character, but I'm not getting any of that.

The pacing definitely doesn't help, it sucks. Hell, why does it seem like scenes are getting shorter and shorter? Some seem like they only last two minutes, sometimes.

Get rid of MAB completely, her inexperience has hindered this show from day one.

Frankly, in retrospect, Jack Smith's last year wasn't that great, but it wasn't as bad as the show is now. Even with the bad stories during his last year, the writing team at the time didn't collectively write a disjointed show and they all seemed to be on the same page. But that does go back to the HW's, I agree.

I don't disagree, but if this is them giving it their best, I'm not impressed. It might trickle down from the top, but when scenes are botched and the dialogue is unnecessary or bad, I'll blame everyone, the HW's and the staff-writers.

But again, Y&R's writing team is still too huge and I don't feel like all the staff-writers are on the same page. If they were smart, they'd trim it down more, so a smaller team would get to know each other better and so they could better be able to be on the same page, most of the time.

I definitely don't think they need as many Breakdown writers as they have, or 3 damn HW's for that matter.

[R Sinclair]

Ugh! Amanda Beall!

If I wasn't questioning your tastes in dialogue before, I'm definitely doing that now.

[Sylph]

I'll let R Sinclair () explain why the 'lack' of impressive, "I want to type that up!" dialogue does not, in any way, mean GH dialogue is nothing special.

There is something called natural, organic, flowing, the way real people talk dialogue and that's what GH gives. Always.

[R Sinclair]

You don't need me, because that's exactly what it is.

[RavenWhitney]

Nelson Branco revealed today that Kriezman is the new head writer of ATWT. I guess Jean Piss and Chris Gouta are letting him drive the story for the next six months.

[Sylph]

[Sylph]

And let's not talk about the beautifully scripted confrontation scenes... Amazing. Every time.

[Y&RWorldTurner]

On today's Y&R, the showed a flashback from one of the most horribly written episodes, where the dialogue is just hilarious, and not because it was intentional.

Barring whatever gay elements there is, the first Adam/Rafe "seduction" scenes were horribly written and funny as hell.

When Adam pulls up close to Rafe and says, "I have feelings, don't you?"

LMFAO! what kind of sh!t is that? It was so awful.

[Sylph]

Who wrote that sh!t? I haven't watched!

[dm.]

Sandra Weintraub wrote the script, Cwikly breakdown.